Life Mastery. Simply Put.

I am currently going through a rough patch in life. It seems as though my life had been one long high for the last couple of years, but like all things in this life, it must come to an end some day. And since now I am in a dark period, I thought this would be a great opportunity to show you guys how I deal with the sadness, loneliness, and everything in between that comes with being a little depressed.

This too shall pass.

This is a quote from stoic philosophy. It is used to remind individuals in times of happiness to cherish their pleasure because of its inevitable end, and more importantly, to remind individuals in times of great sadness to persevere. You have to constantly remind yourself this. Even if you don’t believe in what you say to yourself, make sure that you keep the discipline of reminding yourself that This too shall pass.

Maintain Your Discipline

Too often when we go through something difficult and we ease up on our daily routines. We stop working out, we start watching more TV, we start to eat less healthy. We say to ourselves that it is okay to ease up a bit because you are going through a difficult spot. Bullshit.

Your routines, your healthy daily habits are going to be the things that will save you. Working out will reduce the stress, eating healthy will make you feel better, and all together, they will help you operate at a higher level, and give you a more correct perspective. Once you start allowing yourself to get fat and lazy, you will only start to hate yourself more. Let’s try to actually improve ourselves.

Diversify your Identity

It is time for you to complicate yourself. The reason why people can get so depressed is because much of the time, the average person’s identity is staked on one thing(their work, their relationships, etc). A person will often make a single aspect of their life tell them whether they are successful or not. This is a horrible idea. If you depend on the success of a single outcome to tell you if you are making progress in life, then you need to change that immediately.

How? Try something new. Find something that you enjoy, and add onto your life. And so, what happens is if one aspect of your life does not turn out well, you have something else you can go to. Let’s say you had a bad day at work, but if you had another aspect like working out where you beat your personal record, or any other hobby where you have a personal win, then the bad day or even week at work will not hurt as bad.